Keeping Your Word: How Old-fashioned!

June 26, 1986|By Sidney Shanker, a retired professor of English in the City University of New York.

In French, parole means word. During the age of chivalry a knight unhorsed and hence defeated in battle was allowed to go home once he yielded up his sword, his armor and his steed, and if he gave his word that he would not fight again against this particular enemy. The knight`s word was his bond.

A person`s word as his or her pledge is undergoing a sad and rapid disappearance of late. Real estate agents across the nation are complaining that the handshake that sealed a house sale for time out of mind is now vanishing. Homeowners selling in a tight market are choosing profit over promise.

Recently I had a similar experience. I rented my home to a young woman, a Wall Street brokerage house employee, and accepted her word as her bond. She had forgotten, so she said, to bring her check to rent my summer cottage. A few days later she called to say that vandals had ``totaled`` her BMW in Manhattan. To me, the story is a transparent fiction. Her collision insurance would pay the costs.

Nor is that my only realty experience. A few weeks ago an agent on the island where I spend summers promised to come see my home ``within the hour`` and to bring a prospective renter that afternoon. Not only did she not come nor bring the renter, but she overlooked the courtesy of a phone call. The experience was depressing.

The disappearance of the word as one`s bond has some fairly serious implications. To begin with, it is not happening in a void. One immediate and incontrovertible consequence has been the furious escalation in lawsuits. A retired lawyer friend assures me that people`s sense of impotence, in an increasingly complex, bureaucratic and alienated world, is the reason.

In the ``old days`` a priest, minister, rabbi and sometimes a druggist (where I grew up) who were respected in the community would settle disputes between neighbors. The parties to the dispute signaled their agreement with the compromise by a handshake, a visual parole. In our fortunate era of extreme specialization and professionalization, people run to lawyers like foxes after rabbits. Of course, excessive settlements fuel litigation as well.

What can be done about the beautiful and precious heritage of parole?

Something can be done, something must be done.

Honor is grounded in character. (It is interesting that in classical Greek ethics meant character.) To raise children in a world without character is unthinkable and downright appalling. The period of laissez- faire parenting and phony egalitarianism between parents and children has had its day. Children reared in homes and educated in schools where stress is placed upon keeping one`s word might give parole a chance to make it. More and more schools are returning to ``basics.`` What more important basic than the excitement of being a real human being, committed, developing a character, learning to keep one`s word?